Tense in Simple Conditionals

Dick Crouch, PARC

This talk revisits some old work on temporal reference in conditional statements where both antecedent and consequent are simply tensed, non-modal clauses, such as

(1) If the temperature rose, the bimetallic strip bent.
(2) If the temperature rises, the bimetallic strip bends.

Why, for example, does (1) have two readings where either the temperature rise precedes the strip bending or vice versa, whereas (2) only has the first reading.

I discuss an account of these and similar phenomena where tenses are deictically centered on times of information update implicit in the semantics of conditionals.

Slides (ps)

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